Elise Hempel: “The Shrimp Pizza at Marie’s”
THE SHRIMP PIZZA AT MARIE’S
My grandfather used to love
the shrimp pizza at Marie’s:
the crust, the sauce, the cheese,
the salty shrimp above.
I’m the only one alive
who remembers his delight
on a random Saturday night,
that Chicago neighborhood dive,
how he didn’t curse the price
or the drive, how he lifted the lid
of the take-out box and slid
to his tongue the first thin slice….
I think I remember because
delight wasn’t part of him,
he never did things on a whim,
love wasn’t who he was
and all I ever saw him hold
with tenderness was a beer,
a hammer, some gadget or gear,
the stock pages he’d unfold
more slowly than he’d embrace
our shoulders when we’d visit
before he’d go back and sit,
newspaper across his face.
I remember, too, I suppose,
because it seemed what had dwindled
with Grandma was somehow rekindled,
some lost old melody rose
from his throat when he took a bite,
their hands I could see intertwine
across two glasses of wine
on a long-ago Saturday night.
Elise Hempel’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals over the years, as well as in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Her full-length collections of poems are Second Rain (Able Muse Press, 2016) and Building Chevys (Pine Row Press, 2022).